Consumer behaviour patterns shift in the emerging sharing economy from owning to sharing possessions and create new market opportunities for economic actors. Current literature lacks understanding about the cognitive processes relating to the design of new business models. We identify in this case research six cognitive processes which undergird managerial reasoning during the design of new business model configurations in emergent market environments. These are: (1) proven industry recipes, (2) learned behaviour, (3) problem orientation, (4) intuitional reasoning, (5) experimentation and adaptation, and (6) active customer involvement. The resulting six cognitive design processes can be further assigned to dominant and emergent design logic. Lastly, the combination of dominant and emergent design logic can result in superior value creation of the respective business model.